Happy Thanksgiving!
To understand the history and significance of the first Thanksgiving in November, 1623, read the journal of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford. The Mayflower Compact set up a commune at the Plymouth Bay Colony with equal collective ownership, hence destroyed all incentive and half the Pilgrims starved to death. This disastrous socialist experiment was successfully replaced with capitalist individual farm plots on their plantation according to Bradford so that the Pilgrims would be incentivized by benefiting from their own individual efforts, and with farming knowledge learned from the local Pokanoket Indians, food became abundant leading to the first Thanksgiving celebration and subsequent success of the colony.
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 12:01 AM
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In 1933 Stalin almost exactly repeated this same socialist experiment on a vast scale in the Soviet Union with the same result, the death by starvation of millions of Ukrainians.
"What private property does, as Pilgrims discovered, is connect effort to reward. That creates an incentive for people to care much more and protect things. That's what has protected ... the buffalo in the west ... and is what saved the Pilgrims and then made America the richest country in the history of the world. If you live in a slum in [a foreign country] and have no deed to your property you're stuck in poverty but when you know that your home or store or whatever you make is safe from confiscation, then you can borrow and take risks and invest. That gives you the power to prosper. And that's the lost lesson of Thanksgiving. So Happy Thanksgiving – go prosper!" —John Stossel
The NPR Podcast The Secret Document that Transformed China tells much the same story.
Also see, What's the Truth About the First Thanksgiving?
Steve Forbes reports that the same experience occurred at the Jamestown Colony.
Thanksgiving Proclamation
[President George Washington, New York, 3 October 1789]
By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington
Also see, The Secret Document That Transformed China.
Here is the original 1933 newspaper reporting in The Guardian of the terrible mass starvation in Ukraine resulting in millions dead from Stalin's farm collectivization.
Also see, The Forgotten Story of Thanksgiving.
Also see, Thanksgiving Quiz.
Also see, George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation.
Also see, Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of Thanksgiving.
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